Haydock stages the Group 1 Sprint Cup this Saturday (September 7th, 2024) where the official going at the time of writing is ‘good to soft, soft in places’ with a GoingStick reading of 6.00. Of the three weather forecasts I study, the one I trust the most has just 3.5mm of rain due to fall between now and post time. How will the ground ride on Saturday? Can I play ante-post on horses who need plenty of juice in the ground or will it dry out sufficiently for those who need good ground?
If you ask regular punters what the top five considerations are when assessing a horse race, the state of the going will be in almost all lists (along with a mix of pace, draw, distance, speed figures, current form, trainer form etc) but finding accurate going information seems to be increasingly difficult. Just look at Chepstow’s recent Racing League fixture (August 8th) which opened on ground described as ‘good to firm (good in places: 7.9; Watered)’ but was changed to good to soft (soft in places) during the meeting. The track looked like a ploughed field in the opening apprentice handicap, run 3.23 seconds slower than standard, but the official form book and the Racing Post website will forever refer to it as ‘good to firm’.
Under the long reign of clerk of the course Kirkland Tellwright, Haydock came in for plenty of stick, often deservedly, about the sometimes-glaring difference between the official going and the actual going based on race times. This is when an independent assessment, such as Proform’s or Timeform’s, is hugely helpful. Proform produce a numerical going adjustment for every meeting as well as an ‘actual going’ description and here is there’s versus Haydock’s for the last ten renewals of the Sprint Cup…
Year / Official Going / Proform Going
2023 / Good / Good to firm
2022 / Good to firm / Good to firm
2021 / Good to firm / Good to firm
2020 / Soft / Good to soft
2019 / Soft / Good to soft
2018 / Heavy / Soft
2017 / Heavy / Soft
2016 / Soft / Good to soft
2015 / Good to soft / Good to soft
2014 / Good / Good to soft
Proform’s description was different on seven of the ten occasions and it’s a similar story at Haydock as a whole. Taking officially ‘soft’ going as an example – there were 495 such races (Flat and jumps) at Haydock from 2014 to 2023 and Proform’s going adjustment only had 140 as being run on actual soft ground. They had 42 on heavy, 209 on good to soft and 104 on good – that’s a quite a difference. Tellwright retired in late March of this year, but Proform still only agrees with ten of the 37 ‘soft’ assessments of new clerk Daniel Cooper and the 49 races run on ‘good’ ground since April 1st included two on firm, 13 on good to firm, six on good to soft and even one on heavy according to Proform, with only 27 on good.
So, as punters, how do we tackle the Spring Cup this week? We can wait until the 5f Be Friendly Handicap is run at 3.00 and make a decision on ground conditions before the big race at 3.35, though that doesn’t give us much time to act and certainly won’t help viewers of GG’s Weekend Watch – recorded on Thursday afternoon. We can file the race, or indeed the whole meeting, under ‘too difficult’ and look elsewhere for our bets. We can blurt out the old adage that ‘a good horse will go on any ground’ (which is nonsense in my opinion) and simply ignore the going when coming up with a selection, or how about we jump in the car, drive to the track, and walk the course ourselves? As a journalist with a press badge, I get the chance to do this on occasions and it can be extremely useful. I once found my foot going into an ankle-deep whole on one side of a track shortly before bumping into the clerk of the course who was also walking it. As I stood there, lopsided, I asked if they anticipated any bias ‘no, it’s the same all over’ came the reply. From a practical point of view, with time in short supply and multiple meetings on a Saturday, it would be helpful if the BHA got involved. How about independent going assessments and GoingStick readings across the width of the track like we get at Royal Ascot and York but rarely, if ever at other meetings? Quite why Ripon don’t do this ahead of their Great St Wilfrid meeting which always sees the runners split into two or three groups on the straight course is beyond me. Back to Saturday’s big race, if it came up genuinely good to soft or softer I’d love to back KINROSS at the ante-post 12-1 but he was withdrawn because of fast ground at York last month and if the current description is inaccurate, which history suggests it probably is, I can’t justify getting involved at this point. If it doesn’t then the low-draw backers could be quids in, just like they were 20 years ago.
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